Hi, I have now been in England for 8 days and have done a fair bit in that time. It is raining today =ut the weather was fine over the big Silverstone MG Live event last weeken= except for the last hour when it poured.

The flight to Singapore was great and the plane only 2/3 full, but the long haul from there to London was on an A380 which was totally full with 471 passengers. I was lucky to have an emergency exit row seat on both flights, but I must have caught a bug on the flight because I have a really bad head cold and throat infection ever since and totally lost my voice for a few days.

My host Paul Plummer has been excellent and I have seen plenty of places considering his commitment over the weekend and otherwise as Overseas Director of the MGCC. I have my own room in his house in the tiny village of Chackmore which is near Buckingham in Buckinghamshire (of course). We are only 5 miles from the Silverstone Racing Circuit. Chackmore doesn’t even have a shop but more importantly it does have a pub. The village is right alongside the famous Stowe School and Estate.

In the days leading up to the MG Live weekend on 4, 5, and 6 June I managed to see many villages in these parts, but on the 4 June I was entered in the Tour de Silverstone driving Paul’s MG ZT car with Trish Drane as my navigator. This is like a Kimber Run in South Australia and went for about 80 miles through some of the nicest villages I have seen. Lunch was at the British Heritage Motor Museum at Gaydon and finished back at Silverstone. 4 of these runs were conducted simultaneously starting in different parts of England. The entire event was very well conducted and the instructions and questions well thought out.

I expect to visit the British Transport Museum at Coventry in the next day or so and also visit the grounds and staterooms of Stowe School.

I have booked a flight to Hamburg for early on 12 June and will then make my way to Hamburg and on to Heiligenhafen and see Karina and collect the motor cycle.

That’s a brief rundown on my trip so far and I am very pleased with it all except that Her Majesty’s Customs have charged me 116 pounds ($173) duty and VAT on my second hand motor cycle riding gear I posted over before I left. I am trying to negotiate a refund on that at the moment.

The photo shows my ride on a 1903 Oldsmobile with tiller steering around Chackmore.

Cheers

Ian